The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [3]
I was asleep, my beloved solar-system book fallen on my chest, my fingers still voyaging over its black and starry cover. I was asleep, and then I was in his arms, flying from my bed, awake and asleep and back and forth, and then I was out on the wet lawn, still cradled in his arms, barely able to peel open my crusted eye, to look, at his whispered urging, into his tripodded, heaven-angling telescope’s eyepiece. And there I saw Saturn, my favorite: ringed, unworldly, a giant top among specks of dust. And then he turned some dial, fiddled somehow with the telescope’s lenses and settings, and he brought the view much closer, and I could see a dozen of Saturn’s inhabitants, moving back and forth in their excitement, taking turns looking through their telescope, gesturing at what they saw, up in their own sky, amazed at the sight of me, trying to get my attention.
And then I was brought back to bed, and he kissed me back to sleep.
A little boy wakes from that and—first thing—consults with the most reliable and trusted person in his world for clarification. I asked my twin sister if she had had any dreams, as we often shared them in those suggestible days. “No, because Dad woke me up to see Saturn,” Dana replied matter-of-factually. “I love the rings. It’s the best planet. Except for Pluto.”
“No, Saturn’s better. Did you see the people?”
“Yeah, but Pluto’s better.”
This was as hotly as Dana and I ever disagreed about anything in those days.
Pancakes shaped like Saturn, pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse, which, my father said, could occur accidentally. He would dramatically cover his eyes while dribbling the batter, and sure enough, every fifth pancake (we were five years old) was unmistakably Mickey. I used to take pleasure, even at that provably selfish age, in donating my Mickeys to Dana, and every time she thanked me with real amazement. I recall, too, a pancake with the uncanny profile of my mother, placed before her with a long kiss from the chef to the top of her head. “You’ve got butter on your nose,” he said, placing a dollop on her pancake’s leftmost tip.
(I made pancakes for my own kids in my day. Perhaps it was the Czech flour, but my repertoire consisted solely of ovals and Pollocks. Their Aunt Dana never did any better when she visited.)
Our mother took us to an exhibit of Dad’s paintings. She made us dress up. I had a little bow tie. Dana and I were allowed to walk around on our own, soda in paper cups, hand in hand, and we made each other laugh with stories about each painting, Dad’s and others in the group show. We sat on a wooden bench and watched our mother put her hand on our father’s back, his tumbleweed of black Einstein hair swaying slightly from the rotating floor fan. We blew bubbles in our 7UP, and I made fart sounds for Dana.
“Those last group shows,” my mother reported much later. “So depressing.”
But not for us. My father’s increasingly desperate and pathetic final efforts at being an acknowledged artist had no effect on me and Dana just yet. His anger at the world’s indifference was imperceptible to us, and that is to his credit, or due to children’s natural indifference. For us, the adult world was soda on wooden benches, paintings and stories, midnight glimpses of Saturnine astronomers, magic pancakes. Our father amazed us and won our love not because he treated us like children, but because we thought he was treating us like adults, and adulthood was just a much better childhood.
3
“IN SHAKESPEARE’S DAY, kids your age could speak Latin. Brains can soak up anything, but if you pour in Nancy Drew and TV shows, that’s all you’ll learn.” Our father started reading Shakespeare to us when we were six, and it worked for one